Director of the Cancer Center in the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center Doctor Patrick Reynolds stands next to one of his favorite movies posters, of the 21, hanging in the halls of the cancer center labs Thursday. Reynolds helped with the special effects and guns on the movie "Casualties." (Stephen Spillman / AJ Media)

Dr. Patrick Reynolds is the director of the Cancer Center at the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center.

He’s rigged weapons for movie sets, traveled with Olympic champions and served with the United States Navy.

Dr. Charles Patrick Reynolds has many passions, but his greatest is working to eradicate cancer, particularly in children.

On the fourth floor of the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center, there’s a research laboratory with framed movie posters lining the walls.

They may seem like an ordinary collection of favorite movie posters, but they hold many personal memories for Reynolds.

He collected some because they’re favorite movies. He has friends who’ve worked on some of the others — but there’s a few he contributed to, Reynolds said.

“I’ve always enjoyed film because it’s an unusual art medium in that it’s a mixture of music, writing, drama, science; it’s what I think to be more fun than anything,” Reynolds said. “You mix all of these together. You’re going to have science to do special effects, good drama with very sad writing and none of it comes together without the music.”

After moving to Los Angeles, Reynolds found out the only way to enjoy his weapons hobby was being involved with the movie industry.

“I got involved with it just because the state of California wouldn’t let me have my guns,” he said. “I got on the set and started hanging out with people, I got really intrigued. I had a lot of fun.”

He became a weapons specialist and helped create and rig prop weapons and special effects for movie sets, Reynolds said.

According to the Internet Movie Database, Reynolds’ name is included in 12 movies and shorts as a part of the special effects crew with the title of “Weapons Master.” Some of the movies include “Home Room,” “Based on an Untrue Story” and “Casualties.”

“He has met a lot of people that were working for movies as well,” said Min Kang, associate professor at the TTUHSC School of Medicine and Reynolds’ co-worker. “He’s mentioned a lot of actors and actresses that he worked with in the past. It was quite a surprising perspective of him.”

Kang met Reynolds in 2005 while the latter was working at the University of Southern California.

“One of my interviewers was Dr. Reynolds,” she said. “He recruited me to the school of medicine right after that interview — me and Berry Maurer. The three of us have been working together since then. When we decided to move, three of us moved together to TTUHSC.”

Reynolds worked as a professor at USC’s school of medicine, but he also worked as an adjunct professor in the school of cinematic arts, Kang said.

“He showed a lot of enthusiasm about films, weapons as well,” she said.

Reynolds said his love of weapons started as a child.

“I always found a great interest in big weapons and small weapons and using them for good,” Reynolds said.

His interests developed as a young boy while watching his father and uncle serve in the military.

“My dad had been in WWII in the reserves,” he said. “What really, really got me going into the Navy was my uncle who had died. … He was a Naval officer during WWII and became a captain in the Navy.”

His uncle wrote a book interspersed with information about several Naval ships and personal experiences, Reynolds said. The book served as a deciding factor in combining his love of weapons with an honorable career.

“I decided I wanted to be a weapons officer on a submarine,” he said. “So I got myself a scholarship to the University of Texas in Austin.”

While working in the ROTC program, a medical officer convinced Reynolds he’d be well-suited for a degree in medicine.

“At the time, I had been really interested in research,” he said. “I literally woke up back in Texas the next morning and decided I was going to spend the rest of my life doing childhood cancer research. … I went straight into medical school when I got out of the ROTC program. It was an interesting turn of events from going for nuclear weaponry to childhood cancer.”

Reynolds’ absence from strictly weapons didn’t last long.

“I came back to nuclear weapons when I was assigned in the Navy for research in that area,” Reynolds said.

When he found out about a program that would allow him to get a medical degree while in the Navy, Reynolds took the opportunity.

“They opened up this program when I was on a submarine,” he said. “If you got accepted to medical school, the Navy would give you orders to medical school. Through some help of people back in Navy command in Bethesda, (Md.,) I was able to stretch that out to complete not only my MD, but my Ph.D.”

There was never any doubt that he wanted to focus on childhood cancer research, Reynolds said.

“I was one of the few in my class that really knew exactly what I wanted to do,” he said. “I knew I wanted to hang out with the people in that area all the way through medical school.”

The Navy stationed Reynolds in Los Angeles on active duty, where he worked on clinical trials.

“We had a program in the Navy that was really geared toward developing methodologies to treat mass casualties in nuclear weapons,” he said. “As part of that research, we developed ways in which bone marrow or bone transplantation, which we really used as a model, (were used) to take care of childhood cancer.”

When more clinical trials came up, Naval officers gave him a choic— stay in California and end his Navy career or continue on other Naval assignments, Reynolds said.

As much as he enjoyed his work in film, his military tours and weapons, Reynolds decided he loved helping people overcome cancer and searching for a cure even more.